Act I – The animals we are

“If a democratic state were an organism, which one would it be?” asks the publican.

Silence. Some among the pub’s patrons – wanting a better view of the evening’s action – turn in their heavy chairs.

“Well,” speaks a man with a moustache so large it could provoke envy among walruses, “although völkerpsychologie, the idea that a state could have a personality, proved bunkum in the 20th century, it could help us answer this riddling question of yours.”

“Thus!” he booms between a gulp of beer, “if a democratic state were an organism it would be a bonobo – for these gentle cousins of ours are the democrats of the ape world!”

“Peaceful and co-operative the bonobos may be,” interrupts a lanky stork of a woman as she rises out of her chair, “but democratic states are often duplicitous. David Pritchard reminds us that the ancient Athenians used their slave-owning democracy as a war-propellant, a conquest machine. Similarly, John Dinges recounts America’s promotion of democracy as a means to cover its imperial ambitions.”

She flicks her hair. “I dare say then that a fox best represents the democratic state for they are cunning, realist survivors.”

There’s a loud noise as a septuagenarian pushes back his chair.

“It may be true,” he says, “as some think and have thunk it, that Machiavelli still walks the halls of parliaments. But, no offence to the fox, the idea of a democratic state as duplicitous, conniving or untrustworthy smears its good name.”

He stands to offer his conclusion.

A roar
of equity?Tambako the Jaguar/flickr

“No, a democratic state cannot be a fox. A democracy is a proud beast. It is a shining beacon in a world of threatening darkness that not only upholds, but beams the light of civic virtue, peace, economic prosperity and deliberation throughout the lands, seas and airs.

“A democratic state,” he pronounces, “is nought but a mighty lion whose roar is equity and whose bite is justice.”

A chorus of applause, charging drinks and cheers follow as the man, wearing a cravat so large and fine it might serve as his mane, sits down.

Act II – The animals we aren’t

As the evening’s opening arguments were being made, two young female students – wearing matching hats that give them that hard-to-achieve “twin penguin” look – had come into the bar and sat down to listen.

“I’d like to raise a point,” speaks the first student-penguin over the din of discussion that only busy pubs seem able to create. “We should talk about what organism a democratic state might be without relying on the dangerous fable of völkerpsychologie.”

Somewhere in the room a moustache twitched.

“For it was this Prussian lie that all Germans were iron tigers, Czechs fat sausages, Poles stuffed cabbages and Russians vodka leftovers that led generations to their doom.”

“Let’s ask instead,” she continues, “as Jacques Derrida perhaps would if he were here, what organism a democratic state would resemble if it saw its reflection in the tain of an enormous mirror.”

The second student-penguin adds: “I agree. What would a democratic state see if it looked at itself in the mirror?

“It would see the reflection of its people,” she answers. “Thousands upon hundreds of thousands upon millions of individual souls. For a democracy, as Thomas and Lidija Fleiner or Michael Zürn remind us, is naught but the product of the people that once lived, that now live and that will live within its territorial boundary.”

A democracy is a reflection of its people.hobvious sudoneighm/flickr

Murmuring.

“So a democratic state is like a flock of birds, a hive of bees, or a society of ants?” asks a red-haired woman with a mousy face from the back of the room.

“Surely not,” stork-lady rebuts, “for the question is asking us to name an organism. A flock of birds, nest of ants or whatever leads us to talk of many organisms.”

“Isn’t a democratic state irreducibly plural yet whole at the same time?” returns mouse-face; a little louder now. “It’s like Artemy Magun writes in Politics of the One: we can think of a democratic state as a choir collected around a conductor, or the sum of all the things that a unity of peoples – not necessarily just citizens – produce within its borders.”

Moustache-man re-enters the fray: “I will invoke Reuven Hazan and Gideon Rahat to cut this discussion to the bone. A democratic state is like a political party: it is a plurality, but all members act together as one. This is how a plurality can be, conceptually anyway, a single organism.”

“But,” the first student-penguin chimes in, “a political party, a choir, or even the logic of production suggests that there’s a central power overseeing the unity of peoples. It suggests there’s something controlling the democratic state other than the people.

“Lions, foxes and bonobos,” she rattles off, “fall into this trap too: they have brains, central nervous systems and biological command centres. Surely no democratic state has any structure or process similar to this?”

“Are you saying that democracies are brainless?” pipes cravated-man. “Such an idea would be absurd, for a unity of peoples makes decisions all the time. Democracies have parliaments and institutions and elected leaders who serve as the brain and vital organs of the state!”

She volleys back: “It seems the Pernod you’re drinking has dulled your mind. The things you mention are not the sum of all peoples in a state, nor do they represent or serve all people equally. If a democratic state were your vision of an organism it would, due to its insipid institutions and governmental malfunctions, have long ago gone extinct – eaten perhaps by dinosaurs such as yourself!”

This stab stirs the crowd and the debate becomes heated.

Act III – It came from the publican’s barrel

At this moment, the publican walks briskly into a small side room and rolls out a barrel toward his head table, then pulls it upright. Fetching a small tool from the bar, he uses it to pop open the barrel lid.

He plunges his arm into the briny liquid and pulls out a massive wet blob of a creature. Holding it up high, he yells over the commotion: “This is what a democratic state is!”

The publican then slams the blob – a jellyfish – down on his table, splattering those nearby.

Silence. Grins. Hands wipe off brine. Incredulity. All eyes on the publican.

“As you were debating,” he says, “I couldn’t help but think of something the good president Barack Obama wrote back in 2008.

Barack Obama: a democracy is more than the sum of its parts.Pixabay

“He wrote that a democracy is ‘more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one’. And so, I thought, how can that be, given a democratic state has no equivalent of a nervous system, a brain, or a personality?”

He looks around the room.

“Then it struck me! If a democratic state were an organism, it would be a jellyfish.” He gestures to the blob on the table. “I then remembered I have one of the damn things in my storeroom!”

Paled by the thought that he may have already eaten jellyfish (it appears nowhere in the menu, which, to his mind, suggests the publican must blend it into other dishes – using it as a spice perhaps, or a thickener for puddings … who knows?), cravated-man interjects: “I’m not convinced that a democratic state hasn’t the equivalent of an organism’s central intelligence and nervous system. They have governments and bureaucracies, rules and procedures. How can you discount that?”

“Well, let’s examine how a jellyfish works,” the publican responds. “It’s a living organism with a defined boundary: a jellyfish has shape, texture and contours like any other living being. It lives, yet it doesn’t have a brain or a nervous system like other animals. It thrives in the oceans and seas but has no eyes or ears. It reproduces. Has different life stages. It eats and it swims.”

The publican warms to his explanation: “A jellyfish is the product of millions of individual cells. They are constantly and simultaneously communicating with one another, not only about the external environment that they’re in, but also the condition of their internal environment.”

He pauses, collecting his thoughts.

“The cells,” he resumes, “group together to form all of the parts the jellyfish needs to grow and survive. Cells, to keep the organism strong, are renewed as they age or reverse their ageing as need be. At least one species of jellyfish is even “immortal”. Cells sacrifice themselves by fighting off parasites and attacks and so on, all for the good of the whole. But a cell can also go rogue by turning cancerous which, of course, threatens the whole.

“I think, then, that if a democratic state were an organism it would be a jellyfish, because the people in a democracy are like the cells in a jellyfish. The people conceive of, build, run and repair governments but also the other institutions in their state. If they avoid the cancers, and avoid being eaten by predators or squashed by nature’s random violence, they might even be immortal. It is the people of a democratic state who define and defend their territorial boundary. And they, the ones that lived, the ones that live and the ones that will live, do this together.”

Can the people of a democracy, like the cells of a jellyfish, group together to form, to grow and survive indefinitely?Teddy Hartanto/flickr

The publican turns to cravated-man. “If you take the people away, and leave only the government and the state’s bureaucracies like the military or what-have-you, the democratic state would not exist. It would be like a dead jellyfish, still able to sting, but ultimately lifeless.”

Nodding and cracking a smile, cravated-man says: “Fair enough. But I’ll barter my surrender for a truth. How the hell do you know this much about jellyfish?”

“Ha!” the publican laughs. “It was off this label of the strangest scotch I’ve yet procured. The drink’s got a jellyfish preserved right there in the bottle. High-end stuff!”

Sensing his opportunity to close the night’s discussion (and to rid himself of this strange brew), he adds: “Shots of it are on the house!”

Expecting cheers of approval and a charge to the bar, he gets silence instead. You could hear a mouse fart.

“No offence, publican,” cravated-man breaks the silence, “but you’ve got a jellyfish on the table, a jellyfish in the bottle, and I’ve a fair suspicion that you’ve been sneaking jellyfish into the menu…”

“The menu?” the publican interrupts, surprised. “I’ve heard that jellies are nice if prepared right, but goodness no. No, no…” he trails off, trying to remember what the briny blob is for.

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2 weeks agoby sydneydemocracyProfessor Baogang He, Alfred Deakin Professor, Chair in International Relations, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts & Education, Deakin University and Professor John Keane interrogate authoritarianism and democracy at ACRI UTS

Event Details

A closer look at the way politics has changed
Authoritarian populists have disrupted politics in many societies, as seen in the U.S. and the UK. This event brings together two

Event Details

A closer look at the way politics has changed

Authoritarian populists have disrupted politics in many societies, as seen in the U.S. and the UK. This event brings together two leading scholars to discuss their new books and the power of populist authoritarianism.

Authoritarian populist parties have gained votes and seats in many countries, and entered government in states as diverse as Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland. Across Europe, their average share of the vote in parliamentary elections remains limited but it has more than doubled since the 1960s and their share of seats tripled. Even small parties can still exert tremendous ‘blackmail’ pressure on governments and change the policy agenda, as demonstrated by UKIP’s role in catalyzing Brexit.

The danger is that populism undermines public confidence in the legitimacy of liberal democracy while authoritarianism actively corrodes its principles and practices. It also increases the resolve of authoritarian regimes around the world. This public forum sets out to explain the growth and character of these regimes and the polarisation over the cultural cleavage dividing social liberals and social conservatives in the electorates, and how these differences of values translate into support for authoritarian-populist parties and leaders in the U.S. and Europe, and elsewhere. The forum highlights the dangers to liberal democracy arising from these developments and what could be done to mitigate the risks.

This event brings together Professor Pippa Norris and Professor John Keane to discuss their new books and the power of populist authoritarianism.

Professor Pippa Norris will discuss her new book Cultural Backlash: The Rise of Populist Authoritarianism. Professor John Keane will discuss his new book When trees fall, monkeys scatter.

The Speakers:

Pippa Norris will discuss her new book Cultural Backlash: The Rise of Populist Authoritarianism. Pippa is a comparative political scientist who has taught at Harvard for more than a quarter century. She is ARC Laureate Fellow and Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, the Paul F. McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and Director of the Electoral Integrity Project. Her research compares public opinion and elections, political institutions and cultures, gender politics, and political communications in many countries worldwide. She is ranked the 4th most cited political scientist worldwide, according to Google scholar. Major honors include, amongst others, the Skytte prize, the Karl Deutsch award, and the Sir Isaiah Berlin award. Her current work focuses on a major research project, www.electoralintegrityproject.com, established in 2012 and also a new book with Ronald Inglehart “Cultural Backlash” analyzing support for populist-authoritarianism.

John Keane will discuss his new book When Trees Fall, Monkeys Scatter: rethinking democracy in China. He is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), and Distinguished Professor at Peking University. He is renowned globally for his creative thinking about democracy. He is the Director and co-founder of the Sydney Democracy Network. He has contributed to The New York Times, Al Jazeera, the Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Harper’s, the South China Morning Post and The Huffington Post. His online column ‘Democracy field notes’ appears regularly in the London, Cambridge- and Melbourne­-based The Conversation. Among his best-known books are the best-selling Tom Paine: A political life (1995), Violence and Democracy (2004), Democracy and MediaDecadence (2013) and the highly acclaimed full-scale history of democracy, The Life and Death of Democracy (2009). His most recent books are A Short History of the Future of Elections (2016) and When Trees Fall, Monkeys Scatter (2017), and he is now completing a new book on the global spread of despotism.

Event Details

Speaker: Professor Gerry Stoker, University of Southampton
Some contemporary democracies appear plagued by anti-politics, a set of negative attitudes held towards politicians and the political process. In this

Event Details

Some contemporary democracies appear plagued by anti-politics, a set of negative attitudes held towards politicians and the political process. In this seminar Gerry Stoker explains how and why anti-political sentiment has grown among British citizens over the last half-century drawing on research about to be published in a Cambridge University Press book co-authored with Nick Clarke, Will Jennings and Jonathan Moss. The book offers a range of conceptual developments to help explore how citizens think about politics and the issue of negativity towards politics and uses responses to public opinion surveys alongside a unique data source-the diaries, reports and letters collected by Mass Observation. The book reveals that anti-politics has grown in scope and intensity when seen through the lens of a long view of the issue stretching back over multiple decades. Such growth is explained by citizens’ changing images of ‘the good politician’ and changing modes of political interaction between politicians and citizens. The seminar will conclude by placing these findings in a broader comparative context and exploring the implications for efforts to reform and improve democratic politics.

Chair: Dr Thomas Wynter

Discussant: Professor Ariadne Vromen

Time

(Tuesday) 11:45 am - 1:30 pm

Location

Room 276

Merewether Building, University of Sydney http://sydney.edu.au/arts/about/maps.shtml?locationID=[[H04]]

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Human rights are in freefall across a number of countries in South East Asia. Last year, the Burmese military carried out a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing against

Event Details

Human rights are in freefall across a number of countries in South East Asia. Last year, the Burmese military carried out a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine State causing more than 650,000 Rohingyas to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s murderous “war on drugs” has claimed more than 12,000 victims, predominantly the urban poor, including children. And the Cambodian government’s broad political crackdown in 2017 targeting the political opposition, independent media and human rights groups has effectively extinguished the country’s flickering democratic system at the expense of basic rights.

Australia’s 2017 White Paper includes the goals of “promoting an open, inclusive and prosperous Indo–Pacific region in which the rights of all states are respected” as well as the need to protect and promote the international rules based order. So what role does Australia play in addressing these problems and what more could the Australian government be doing?

To discuss these matters, we are delighted to welcome Elaine Pearson.

Elaine Pearson is the Australia Director at Human Rights Watch. Based in Sydney, she works to influence Australian foreign and domestic policies in order to give them a human rights dimension. She regularly briefs journalists, politicians and government officials, appears on television and radio programs, testifies before parliamentary committees and speaks at public events. She is an adjunct lecturer in law at the University of New South Wales. From 2007 to 2012 she was the Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division based in New York.

Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Elaine worked for the United Nations and various non-governmental organizations in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Kathmandu and London. She is an expert on migration and human trafficking issues and sits on the board of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women. Pearson holds degrees in law and arts from Australia’s Murdoch University and obtained her Master’s degree in public policy at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

She writes frequently for publications including Harper’s Bazaar, the Guardian and the Wall Street Journal.

Event Details

Although Michel Foucault never refers explicitly to the problematic of political theology, his genealogical analyses of the mechanisms of power in secular modernity reveal their religious origins and the way

Event Details

Although Michel Foucault never refers explicitly to the problematic of political theology, his genealogical analyses of the mechanisms of power in secular modernity reveal their religious origins and the way they emerge out of ecclesiastical institutions and practices. However, I will suggest that Foucault’s contribution to political theology in a sense turns the paradigm on its head and signals a radical departure from the Schmittian model.

Foucault does not seek to sanctify power and authority in modernity, but rather to disrupt their functioning and consistency by identifying their hidden origins, unmasking their contingency and indeterminacy, and bringing before our gaze historical alternatives. Furthermore, Foucault introduces to the debate around political theology something that was entirely missing from it – the idea of the subject. The notion of the ‘confessing subject’ – the individual who, from earliest Christian times, has been taught to confess his secrets and thus form a truth about himself – is central to Foucault’s concerns, as are the ethical strategies through which the subject might constitute himself in alternative ways that allow a greater degree of autonomy. And while in the past, religious institutions and practices, particularly the Christian pastorate, have sought to render the subject obedient and governable, at other times, including in modernity, religious ideas have been a source of disobedience, revolt and what Foucault calls ‘counter-conducts’. It is here that I will develop the idea of ‘political spirituality’, showing how this notion can operate as a radical counter-point to political theology.

About the speaker:

Saul Newman is Professor of Political Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London and currently a Visiting Professor at the Sydney Democracy Network. His research is in continental political thought and contemporary political theory. Mostly known for his research on postanarchism, he also works on questions of sovereignty, human rights, as well as on the thought of the nineteenth century German individualist anarchist, Max Stirner. His most recent work is on political theology and post-secular politics, and he has a new book forthcoming with Polity called Political Theology: a Critical Introduction.

Time

(Thursday) 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm

Location

Seminar Room 498

Merewether Building, University of Sydney

Organizer

Department of Government and International Relationsmadeleine.pill@sydney.edu.au